SSgA Announces Launch of Long-Short Strategy Mutual Fund

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation, has launched the SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund, a long-short (130/30) mutual fund that seeks to achieve long-term capital appreciation over the course of an economic cycle.

Edge strategies, State Street’s version of short-extension or 130/30 approaches, introduce a limited amount of short selling in order to take advantage of a negative viewpoint in the stock ranking process, while providing capital for additional long positions of the same magnitude to maintain 100% exposure to a benchmark, SSgA explained in a company announcement.

The SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund will invest its assets, including proceeds received from short sales of securities, primarily in large and medium-capitalization securities – the underlying valuation or business fundamentals of which indicates prospects for growth. The fund plans to short sell the securities of companies with apparent deteriorating business fundamentals and/or valuations.

“The SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund offers mutual fund investors access to State Street’s unmatched experience as a disciplined manager of long-short equity strategies for institutional clients,” said James Ross, senior managing director at State Street Global Advisors, in the announcement. “By removing the long-only constraint from the stock selection process, the Core Edge Equity Fund is designed to provide an increase in expected returns with a risk level that is moderately higher than that of the S&P 500 Index.’